Before yesterday’s Yankees game, much of the news was focused on the layoffs at the New York Daily News. A number of people got let go from the New York City newspaper, including several people from the sports department.
This isn’t a post about celebrating someone getting laid off or talking about the future of these employees. Personally, I wish those people affected the best and hope to land on their feet quickly. Instead, this is a post about the future of sports coverage from news outlets.

The New York Daily News was one of my go-to news sources for several years when it came to reading about the Yankees. I would check the game recap, read quotes, consider columnists’ concerns and opinions. It would provide fodder for my conversations whether we were praising and downplaying the article in question.

Now with the likes of Mike Lupica, Teri Thompson and others from Daily News gone, I wonder how that is going to affect coverage of the Yankees. The day-to-day stuff will be there, but it’s the peripheral articles and columns that are going to change.

Change is change – not judging good or bad. But it’s important to have those additions along with daily content.

With social media, newspaper editors have had to learn how to adapt with how people get their news. I live in NY, and riding the subway everyday, I see people looking at their phones more than reading a newspaper. They might be reading a news site on their phone, they might be on Twitter or Facebook, they may even be on this blog.

But the old ways of disseminating news doesn’t work anymore. Unfortunately, I just think these layoffs are a disservice to readers. While newspapers get rid of staff because they are trying to save money, readers are going to look for other ways to get information and other ways to be part of the conversation.

That’s going to be places like this blog or Twitter or Facebook. But that’s not going to be on a newspaper website because you took some of the most interesting parts of it when you got rid of some of the voices.

Obviously, they could replace some of the voices with fresh, new ones, who have an idea what a younger readership is looking for – but I wouldn’t be holding my breath for that.